Interrogation 3

“You’re moving to another facility tomorrow, puppy.”

At first you don’t understand. Your brain’s a bit hazy, with your head between her thighs and her taste lingering on your lips. And her fingers in your hair, again, longer than it was when you arrived. Not regulation.

“… I am?”

“Mhmm. Things are in motion. Your empire’s getting desperate, too,” a sharp-toothed grin, “maybe we’ll trade you for something good.”

“… oh.”

“Yep. You’ll be with some other prisoners, get that famed empire camaraderie going. Give you a chance to remember why you hate us.”

You almost, almost, ask whether you have a choice. Whether you could—no. Stupid. You bury your face in her instead, savoring her scent, her taste. Memorizing her body with the same focus you once fixed on your mech’s controls, loving the way she twitches under your tongue, still so sensitive from your earlier efforts.

“Aww, puppy, you want to say goodbye? Well, I won’t say no to that …”

There’s no bowl of fragrant food waiting for you afterwards, but that’s okay. You’ve been eating well. Better than you did in the Empire, really. Pilots’ weight must be as carefully managed as any other piece of materiel, kept well within the design envelope. An extra pound is one less round.

Senior pilots sometimes opt to have their limbs amputated. They say the extra ammunition, the extra fuel, gives them an edge. Lets them move just a bit faster, fight just a bit longer, even if it means that they’ll never be allowed to retire: they’ll die in battle or in a hospital’s incinerator, executed before they can become a blight on the Empire’s purity. Paradise requires sacrifice.

You pinch your belly between two fingers. Roll on your side and feel the heft of one of your breasts. More than before. Your thighs, too … not as soft as your warden’s, though. Nor as strong.

Maybe you won’t be able to be a pilot any more. If they trade you back.

If the Empire wants you back.

If …

You’re asleep when they come for you, curled up in your warm bed. Always warm despite the thin, over-washed sheets. Two tall soldiers, wrapped in cracked leather and scorched body armor, belts dripping with weapons. Nothing that could stop a mech.

Not that you could pilot a mech with your arms zip-tied behind your back and one of their too-solid hands on the back of your neck. Not that you have a mech.

Your warden’s not there to see you off. Her cluttered desk is perfectly bare.

The prison is loud, crowded, and cold. Obviously a converted high school, one of the ones the Empire built in its late expansion. Twenty, thirty years old, now, its active-shooter countermeasures retrofitted with bulky remote doors and the bulbous shapes of crowd-suppression turrets. Impossible to say whether they were installed by the Empire or the Liberation, but the vast spider-mech crouched above it is classic Liberation, sleek and featureless. Its legs are a fractal nightmare, barely thicker than fingers by the time they reach the ground, resting so lightly that the dirt barely move under them.

Terrifying and disgusting, but, god, you wish you could see it from the inside. Its control interface must be fascinating.

Prisoner intake is in a fenced-off area of the gym.

There are Empire soldiers—PoWs, just like you—working out on the other side of the fence, playing games, shouting raucous questions. No pilots that you can see.

“Hey, fresh meat!” One yells as a guard strips you. “Got any news from the front?”

“Whew,” as a guard sprays you with caustic powder, “look at the tits on this bitch! She’s been eating well!”

“You kill any of them on your way down, pilot?”, a grey-haired and thick-shouldered sergeant yells while the rest of them are hooting at the sight of a guard fitting you with a chastity belt and cage. Trying to act like any of this is normal.

The guard doesn’t explain when you ask, but, looking around, you see that all of the other prisoners have similar lumps under their thin sweatpants. A control system, you suppose. Less kind than brain-clamps or chemical chastity, but the Liberation must not have the resources for those.

You’re issued two sets of ill-fitting and well-worn clothing, a pair of paper-thin shoes, a tube of toothpaste, a tooth brush, and a single blanket. The final touch is a chip implanted in your bicep and you’re released into the general population, aching and confused.

There aren’t any other pilots in the prison.

You lie about being bloodied. Claim an extra handful of patrols, a Liberation mech torn to shreds, a munitions camp burnt from a distance. It helps make them respect you. Everyone likes an effective weapon.

A lot of the other prisoners like to loudly fantasize about what they’d do to the guards, whether or not the guards are in earshot. Murder and rape feature heavily. Graphic torture is less prominent, especially after you learn that the prison’s northern wing (formerly: science classrooms and a single, sad-looking music room, empty of everything except a broken tuba) is the domain of a group of NCOs who enforce the Empire’s hierarchy and expectations with the impersonal cruelty of career soldiers.

The guards never react. You’re not entirely sure that they’re human.

Breakfast is a pile of slop with soggy granola and watery coffee.

Lunch is a pile of slop between two slices of bread.

Dinner is a pile of slop with limp greens, mealy fruit, and a cup of weak beer.

The soldiers always bitch about it. You don’t mind, though; it reminds you a bit of the nutrient paste pilots eat while they’re waiting to be deployed. Better flavor; whoever calibrates the machine adds in spices to distinguish the different meals.

Someone steals your blanket.

Time passes.

You begin to notice oddities.

The prison is an emotional pressure-cooker, full of hormonal soldiers champing at the bit for a change to take revenge on their captors. Every day is humiliating and frustrating; every day you feel like someone’s going to be pushed too far, like a fight’s about to break out. A prison riot is waiting on the tip of your tongue.

But …

It never does.

Conflicts sputter out before they go anywhere.

You watch two soldiers scream at each other, chest-to-chest, spittle flying with every furious word and bile-filled imprecation. Waiting for one of them to pull back an arm and strike, to escalate, to make something happen. The energy is fucking palpable all around them, like this could be the moment, this could be the spark—!

They end up going off with their arms around each others shoulders, suddenly the best of friends.

Or:

You’re wary of the crowd-suppression turrets. You always have been. The Empire has them everywhere; they’re supposed to make people feel safe, especially the kid-friendly models with eyes on stalks and bright, cartoony paintjobs. You used to have nightmares about the ones in your school.

So you don’t like to get too close to them. None of the other prisoners do either; the things might be less-than-lethal, but everyone knows that’s only above the recommended minimum 20-meter engagement distance. And everyone knows that the Empire’s crowd-suppression turrets automatically trigger on targets within one meter (your father once told you that hanging out under newly installed turrets kept him alive through an especially bad winter, even if he felt bad for all the pigeons).

But you’re pretty sure that none of the ones in the prison are plugged in.

Or:

The mech-leg fence that fills in the gaps in the former school’s own security cordon should be electrified. Otherwise, there are gaps in it large enough for a pilot-sized soldier to squeeze through. For you to squeeze through.

But you’ve seen sparrows clinging to it. You’ve seen feral dogs piss on it. You’ve even, in an especially brave moment, gone up to touch it yourself. With your bare hand.

So: oddities. Weird things. Details that don’t quite add up with the idea that this is a high-security facility for dangerous Empire soldiers.

It’s a tight squeeze, but you manage it.

One of the guards watches you leave.

You steal a car.

“Steal” might be the wrong word. It’s the first thing you see when you get outside. Unlocked, key in the ignition, a full tank of gas. If not for the gentle coating of ash covering it you’d have thought that its driver had just stepped out for a smoke.

… do they think this is a game?

There’s the remains of a road, shattered by bombs and the tread of empire mechs. An obvious path, even if you have to skirt its edges (or go off it entirely) more often than not. It’s not hard. The car’s controls are nothing compared to a mech’s.

You know that you don’t have to follow it, and you expect that they’ve made allowances for that sort of decision. What is a path if not another sort of control? But it’s easier to go along with it.

Three hours later the sun is hanging low in the sky, thinking hard about whether it should press up against the distant horizon, and the car’s headlights won’t turn on. An intentional flaw, you suppose, limiting how far you’ll be able to travel, as if you hadn’t already gotten the point.

It’s a good thing that there’s a roadside bar waiting for you, isn’t it? Light spilling out of its narrow windows, a pile of burnt-out cars at the back of its suspiciously clean parking lot. A Liberation mech curled up behind it, right by the dumpsters, where you wouldn’t have seen if you hadn’t thought to circle the building. Not exactly hidden, just … more fucking games.

She’s sitting at the empty bar, idly swirling her drink. Waiting for you.

“Hey! What the fuck is this?”

“Finally decided to come in, huh? I was starting to feel insulted.”

“No, you weren’t,” you slam your fist on the bar next to her, “you fucking stage-managed all of this! What even was that fake prison?”

“It wasn’t fake. We keep the, ah,” she pauses, pretending to search for a word, “people who can’t cope there. Temporarily, hopefully, but some of them won’t ever be ready for the outside. Anyway,” that damn smile, “can I buy you a drink?”

“There’s no one here to buy it from.”

“No. But, well, I can make you a drink, and we can pretend that money changed hands.”

“I thought the Liberation didn’t believe in money.”

“Eh,” she wiggles her free hand, “it’s complicated. We’re still trying to work out some of the details of what utopia should be. Anyway, a drink?”

“… sure. Whatever.”

“Aww,” she doesn’t reach out to touch you as she walks past, “are you angry at me, puppy?”

“Yes! Of course I am! You’re just … playing games! Why!?”

She starts making your drink before she replies. You’ve never seen anything like it before; cherries are involved. “Which answer do you want, personal or ideological?”

“Both.”

“Well, the wonks say it’s to poison your mind against systems of control,” she says with a shrug. “To really make you understand the nature of choice and control, so that even if you do go back to the empire you won’t be of any use to them.”

“… that’s stupid.”

“It’s experimental,” she slides your drink across the bar, “anyway, personally? I like empire pilots. You’re all so eager to please. So pliable! It really brings out the worst in me. And you have a cute mouth.”

“… really?” You take a sip. It doesn’t taste like cherries. It doesn’t taste like anything you’ve known before, really, but it makes your stomach and your face feel nice and warm, so you have another sip.

“Yep! Would I lie to you? Uh,” she waves her hand, “don’t answer. Figure of speech.”

“… sure. So, what now?”

“Well,” she leans on the bar, cleavage on full display, “I happen to need a pilot for my mech. And I think you’d be a very useful tool for, ah,” she must sharpen her teeth, it’s the only explanation, “dealing with more recalcitrant subjects.”

“You’re offering me a job? And also, uh,” you blush.

“Yep! You’ve got the idea. How’s the drink, by the way?”

“It’s very good. But, uh … this seems like a lot of effort to go to for just that,” you say, tilting your head questioningly. “Why don’t you just brainwash me, like all the propaganda says the Liberation does?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, dear.”